Collingwood netballer Ash Brazill at the Shrine of Remembrance.Credit:Wayne Taylor
“For me to be able to play on Anzac Day is really special because I’m not just playing for the men and women that have served,and are still serving,but also to know that my great-grandfather did that,so I’m able to live the life that I live now,” Brazill said. “So to now actually be able to celebrate on,not just a footy field but also our game day,being on a netball court ... What Tuesday will represent is that this is more than a game.”
As one of Australia’s most accomplished dual sport athletes – a Commonwealth Games gold medal winner with the Diamonds and an AFLW footballer with Collingwood – Brazill is in a unique position to chart the growth of women’s sport.
That netball has its own Anzac Day fixture is symbolic of its important place in Australian sport,she says,but she wants more teams added to the Super Netball competition and hopes it will become impossible,as each code becomes fully professional,for athletes like her to play more than one sport at the elite level.
“I really do hope one day that you can’t do it because both sports are just as professional as the other and I think that day is coming ... and I’m just very fortunate that I was able to do it when I could do it,” said Brazill,who has announced she will retire from netball at the end of the season but will continue her AFLW career.
Balancing family life – she and wife Brooke have Louis,3,and Frankie,1 – with not one,but two sporting careers,has its challenges.
Victor Charles Carter (centre),great-grandfather of Collingwood netballer Ash Brazill,served in World War II.
Brazill said more teams need to be introduced to the competition for netball to keep pace with other codes,such AFLW and the Women’s Big Bash League.